Re: possible 'git cp'/how does git detect copies

[Mircea Bardac <dev@mircea.bardac.net>]

Hi,

Santi Béjar wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 14:40, Mircea Bardac <dev@mircea.bardac.net> wrote:
>> I was looking today at duplicating a file but, I soon realized that there is
>> no 'git cp' command (this was the "deductive approach to git commands",
>> starting from git mv/rm/...). How does "git diff -C" detect copies (-C is
>> used for this, according to the documentation)?
> 
> Did you followed the "See also −−find−copies−harder."?

I knew this from before but for some reason I forgot about it when I 
tried it now. The documentation for "git diff -C" is a bit misleading. I 
have originally tested on git 1.5.2.something and the documentation for 
-C didn't point to --find-copies-harder. I've quickly installed 1.5.6.1 
to test the behavior but not the man pages.

Looking over the online docs for 1.5.6.1, it appears that there is now a 
reference to --find-copies-harder.

Even so, saying just that "Detect copies as well as renames." is not 
enough, as it assumes that there is no restriction on the detection process.

 From --find-copies-harder
"For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if the 
original file of the copy was modified in the same changeset." should be 
moved to -C.

>> On a very simple test, I couldn't see this working. I just copied one file,
>> added it, committed the change, ran "git diff -C HEAD^!". There is no place
>> saying that it's contents is copied from some other file (both files are in
>> the repository now).
>>
>> "git blame -C new_copied_file" also doesn't show the commits for the
>> original file.
> 
> git blame -C -C new_copied_file

Ah, duplicating the parameter. Looking better over these options I have 
noticed that --find-copies-harder for "git diff" can also be replaced 
with an extra -C. A little bit of consistency would help: either
"-C -C", either "--find-copies-harder" in both git blame/diff. Removing 
from the documentation the deprecated version but keeping the 
implementation for backwards compatibility might be a solution.


Many thanks,
Mircea

P.S. I know that patches are encouraged and technically it's pretty 
simple to create a documentation patch, but I have not yet formed myself 
a workflow for sending patches via Git to a maillist (this is a pending 
task for me)

--
http://mircea.bardac.net